Ep.29: An Entire Island Nation Driving on Sargassum with Dr. Legena Henry

Dr. Legena Henry is an MIT graduate, and a Mechanical Engineer, who is now the Lecturer for Renewable Energy at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, specializing in Renewable Energy and Applied Mechanics. She researches sustainable energy sources in the Caribbean, such as bio-fuel from Sargassum seaweed, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, and wave energy.

Listen to the episode to learn about:

Intro (2:30)

What Does Sargassum mean to Legena? (3:39)

Barbados 100% Fossil Free by 2030! (3:48)

Effect Sargassum has on Tourism in Barbados (4:51)

Thoughts on renewable energy sources (6:10)

Tourism, sargassum removal and placement into landfills and Hydrogen Sulfate gas (9:00) Success in Barbados of creating sargassum biofuel (10:52)

How much water does it really take to make 1 bottle of rum and how much is wasted? (11:56) How you can help save the planet by drinking premium Caribbean rum - Part I (14:45)

Ratio between wastewater and solids to make methane for fuel (16:54)

Historical cane industry in Barbados (18:20)

Why you should drink premium Caribbean rum – Part II (19:36)

Why not cane for fuel? (20:00)

Can we make rum from sargassum though? (20:55)

Scaling up this as a solution (22:45)

The micro digesters being used to create this project and how they are scaled-up (25:50)

100K USD grant received at the UN General Assembly for this amazing work! (26:50)

What is the scale-up going to look like? (27:50)

What happens to the waste from this process? (28:27)

Is this sargassum methane biofuel the best option for Barbados right now? If so, why? (31:25) Renewable energy options for Barbados (32:35)

Benefits of using fresh sargassum materials (34:00)

Closing (35:00)

Wrap-Up (35:45)

Outro (39:56)

Episode transcript

To learn more about Legena Henry and her work:

֍ Legena's website

֍ Legena's LinkedIn page

֍ Legena's Researchgate page

֍ Paper: Experimental Evidence on the Use of Biomethane from Rum Distillery Waste and Sargassum Seaweed as an Alternative Fuel for Transportation in Barbados 

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